January 28, 2008

On his 16th birthday, Tomokazu Mikuri had a realistic dream where he sees a girl battling a giant floating monstrosity. When he wakes up, he is surprised that the girl is actually sleeping next to him... Whenever he sleeps from now on, he ends up back at the dream world, and more and more people that he knows keep showing up there too. He finds out from a mysterious masked woman in the dream world named Silk that they are fighting against one named Faydoom, and he is the one who provides the powers to those girls so that they can fight these monsters.

What ANN doesn't say is how he "provides the power" to those girls, a couple of which are lolis.

He molests them. That powers them up so they can fight.

There's also a PS2 game, though I'm not clear which came first. It gives numbers. Mone is 4'6" tall, with measurements 26/20/27. Yeah, sure; tell me that's an adult.

They don't give an age for her. The others: Miduki is 16, Nanase is 22, Kuyou is 14, and Neneko also doesn't have an age. That one's 4'2", obviously another adult.

I have the feeling that deep down this is a Sakura Wars rip off, at least at the game level. The Sakura Wars game franchise was immensely successful. The fighting team was all girls but led by the male player avatar (Ogami). Part of the game was keeping the girls happy, and part of it was fighting battles. If the girls were happy, they fought better.

In SW, "keeping the girls happy" was entirely G-rated and platonic. In Yumeria I would bet it's borderline hentai, and "happy" may not be the goal anyway. And in the anime, the guy does things to the lolis I have no interest in seeing.

No, thanks.

UPDATE: Actually, I ended up changing my mind and did get this one. It was... OK. I guess. It certainly wasn't quite the lolicon pander series I thought it would be. But it wasn't really all that good, either. I ended up giving it two stars.

1
"Molest" overstates it considerably. The first few power-ups are traditional harem-comedy accidents, and he's certainly motivated by hormones, but simple physical contact will do the trick, and does later on.

Ecchi, yes, and it's got 1.5 lolis, but not even close to hentai. I don't think he ever does more than touch a clothed breast, although he'd certainly like to. The male teacher's a perv, but he's a very minor character.

And they give a perfectly reasonable explanation for Mone's behavior and limited vocabulary.

2
Pocky's reaction, on seeing this show up on the schedule, was "oh god! We licensed the bad touch anime!"

I leave it to your imagination where he was introduced to the "bad touch" game... ;p

I never saw it in any shape or form. The person who was doing the translation revisions, though, hated it like root canals done by a Getter. "With the fiery burning hatred of ten thousand suns" doesn't even sum it up. Apparently, it's not just creepy, but almost incalculably stupid...

Downsides? The technobabble is dreadful, but fortunately brief. The loli-service is mostly played for laughs, but they do love to zoom in on all of the girls in their tight battle suits. Neneko is an annoying, wise-beyond-her-years loli with no apparent home or family. Silk might as well have a sign taped to her chest revealing her secret. Several episodes exist merely to check off harem-comedy tropes. The "what's really going on" revelation is clumsy, even if it does explain the behavior of Nanase, Kuyou, Mone, and Silk.

To me, Neneko was the real icky one. Not so much her (although she was a little too worldly), as every guy in town seemed to be drooling over her. Ewwwwww. One woman even gave her a drink from the bar. Hello? Minor?

Ishigari was an annoying jack***, but he kept getting his, and everyone was on to him, so he couldn't get any where with Moné. Tomokazu's sister really creeped me out when she got drunk and tried to seduce him, but I guess I've become somewhat innured to sis-cons since then. (Proof that anime really does rot your mind.)

There was some good humor in the show (the dodgeball game; the error in the school notes), and the twist ending was creepily well done. Overall, I think I gave it a C. (Kuyou is one of my favorite "green-haired babes" and almost made my dream team harem.)

6
I've seen a few episodes, and while it ain't high art, it's not particularly objectionable either. (I'm annoyed by the OP, though, which is almost good bouncy fun but falls a little short in every respect.)

11
Come on, you can't possibly mention "worst ever" and not bring up Apocalypse Zero. We screened an episode of that, removed the tape from the VCR, smashed on it, jumped up and down on the remains, and then set fire to them. One viewer cried, "Oh god, burn out my ovaries!"

January 19, 2008

Shows I'll never watch: Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE

CLAMP (the all-girl orchestra) finally ran out of ideas. So they decided to recycle all their old ones for a new manga and anime series.

Shaoran and Sakura star, but it's not the ones we know. They're older. Sakura is a princess of the Clow kingdom. Shaoran is a commoner, her childhood friend. Some bad guys try to steal Sakura's magical power, and as a result she loses her memory. It's fragmented and spread all over the place (as tattoos on naked elves) in alternate universes, and with the help of the mystic Mokona they have to travel from alternate to alternate and try to recapture the pieces.

And just what are all these alternates? Well, they're revamped versions of all of CLAMP's old series. For instance, Chii is listed in the credits. (Different voice actress, however.) I don't see anything listed from Angelic Layer but I bet that's just because the list isn't complete.

52 episodes later they ended it, but they're still traveling. Then there was a 3-ep OVA, which also doesn't finish the story.

No thanks.

CLAMP has given me some good times, but there comes a point where their "be weird just for the sake of being weird" act starts to grate. This show sounds like a total case of author-gratification, cynically foisted off on an existing body of fans "because those idiots will buy anything we do."

January 08, 2008

Shows I'll never watch: Midori Days

Midori Days: Thirteen episodes about a guy falling in love with his right hand.

High school delinquent Seiji Sawamura is desperate to have a girlfriend, especially after being rejected by 20 girls as of late. He's afraid that he will end his life with his right hand as his only companion. Apparently, that doesn't change when one day when he wakes up and discovers that his right hand has become a girl named Midori Kasugano, who confesses that she has had a crush on him for the last three years.

Eeew. I didn't believe this concept when I first heard of it, and I still don't. There's Freudian, and then there's

Freudian!

...and this is the latter.

Of course, it was released in Region 1 by Media Blasters, who also did High School Girls and Gakuen Heaven. Who else would license it, after all?

UPDATE: Author begs to dispute. And I've been told by a reliable source that it sold extremely well. I can't say I'm all that surprised.

October 07, 2007

There's yet another Gundam series beginning now, and there's a description of it here. Which reminded me that I hadn't mentioned that I'm not even slightly interested in the series.

It's everything that's wrong with mecha shows, as far as I'm concerned. It's everything that's wrong with anime which is designed primarily to sell toys. It's been sequelized so much that the thin soup is now indistinguishable from distilled water.

Have you seen how many Gundam series and movies there have been? (And I thought DBZ went on interminably long! Sheesh.) And every one is 14 year old boy wish-fulfilment. Even when I was that age I would have known how stupid it was.

I'll give them points for including at least one battle mecha on tracks instead of on legs in the original series. But it's still a stupid design. Tall, with a short footprint, is still easier to hit and easier to knock down than short and flat like a tank. If those guns are anything like reasonable weapons, the recoil risks knocking that thing on its backside. And why, oh why, oh why has it got arms? Dumb, dumb, dumb...

1
I liked the original series... a bit. The rest, I've never bothered with. As for the new series, I watched the first episode, and it's dreck. Pretty dreck, with some nice character designs, but worse, transnationalist one-world, peace-by-any-means dreck.

2
Gundam is incredibly frustrating in all its incarnations. I won't
say it's as bad as Gasaraki, but it makes about as much sense.

In most Gundams (I am not a Gundam expert, but this is my understanding
from what I have seen and read), there is generally a nominal "good"
and "bad" side. The heroes are introduced as working for the
cause of the "good" side, if not always directly for it. However,
as the series progresses, the line between the sides blurs, and the
"good" leaders are shown to be stupid and selfish. The heroes
then begin fighting for "themselves", or "their buddies", or "because
that's what soldiers do", with no mention of strategic goals or an end
state besides a cease fire. Psychobabble gets tossed around about
a soldier's fate, and why wars are horrible, but we have to have them
so that soldiers have something to do, or somesuch. The series
then wraps up with some big doomsday weapon, while distracting the
viewer from the bigger picture with personal/romantic plots with the
heroes.

About the only character I really enjoy from any Gundam is Duo from
(gasp) Gundam Wing; as portrayed, at least, he almost seems to know
he's in a poorly-written anime and is determined to have some fun as he
gets shuffled from plot device to plot device.

The sad thing is, the original concept--Earth blows billions setting up
space colonies, space colonies make massive amounts of money but are
unhappy with Earth ownership, racial factors (in some series, the
colonists will have Space Nazis, while Earth has the Klan), lots of
tension and no clear way to satisfy parties that *should* otherwise be
able to get along with each other--fascinates me. Because,
whether the writers know it or not, there are a lot of parallels to the
American Revolution (which is not exactly a boring story), and a tight
story written with fewer cardboard villains and less pacifistic moaning
could really be neat.

But, instead, I expect we'll get more of the same, and my participation
will be limited to reading episode summaries and laughing at them.

Posted by: BigD at October 08, 2007 10:21 AM (JJ4vV)

3
The original series needs to be viewed in the context of its time. There had never before been an anime that even attempted to be "serious" science fiction. The science was harder and the characters more "human" than any SF anime up to that time, by a long shot. The impact of the series is often forgotten these days, but it was considerable. SF fans (and with them, the core of otakudom) started watching in droves. Kids watched it, teenagers watched it, even a lot of adults watched it. It is arguable that without Gundam, the entire anime industry would have followed a very different path, probably ending up a lot more like ours.

Posted by: Toren at October 08, 2007 11:06 AM (a7WnG)

4
One of the things I thought was particularly refreshing about Crest of the Stars was that neither side was portrayed as being "good guys". There was the crazy intelligence guy from United Mankind, but there was also Baron Febdash. Jinto and Lafiel are loyal to the Empire, as they should be, but I didn't get the impression that even they thought their side was somehow more noble, more good than the other. It's just that it was their side and they were staying loyal to it.

5.One of the things I thought was particularly refreshing about Crest of the Stars was that neither side was portrayed as being "good guys".' I still disagree on that point.

The problem is, we're hardwired to be skeptical of anyone claiming to conquer anything, anywhere, anytime for the betterment of mankind. But in that universe, the UM is shown to be racist and xenophobic, through their constant propagandizing about the Abh.. It's also noteworthy that the Abh may intend to conquer the galaxy, but they're patient. The Triple Alliance attacked them, not the other way around. I read it to mean their policy is "anytime you're stupid enough to attack us, we'll expand by defeating you. Eventually we'll rule everything, and that will put a stop to this nonsense."

The Abh generally don't care what the planets they rule do; they basically finance the Empire not through taxation of the planets or citizens, but by the Empress' absolute control of all shipping. She owns all civilian ships outright, and only Abh crew interstellar-capable ships. The nobles then finance themselves through selling fuel to the Empress' ships. (An open question is acquisition of raw resources. Are planets required to supply anything, or do the Abh buy from them, or do they only mine asteroids and dead planets? I don't see how they avoid the first.)

The control of trade should make it possible to gouge the planets mercilessly, but the Abh seem to be practicing supply-siders. We never see anyone complain that the Abh are bleeding them dry with taxation or gouging them in trade fees. Grounders are pretty much left to do as they please. While Febdesh's may exist, they would appear to be the exception.

6
I'll disagree with that. Well, not with the racism part, but we
don't get to see much of the general attitude of the UM beyond that of
2 worlds that were conquered by the Abh, so I don't know how widespread
it actually is.

The problem is, the Abh Empire is... an empire. Sure, they're
expansionist out of an old fear of being wiped out, but that just makes
it all the more tragic. The fact is, the Abh routinely threaten
to wipe out all life on entire worlds if they don't knuckle under, even
if those worlds are no theat and have no FTL capability. To harm
a single Abh is to see your planet burn.

The Abh impose hereditary dictatorships on their worlds. The
*only* protection billions of people have from a Febdesh--or a
Spohr--is the Abh sense of aristocratic nobility. That's a dang
thin veil to stand between you and planetary anihillation. And as
the Abh expand across space, tearing down democracies and dictatorships
alike to impose their own feudal monarchy, the number of planets that
*will* be oppressed, or outright destroyed, will grow. Against
that threat, signing on to even a racist and xenophobic nation sounds
like a good idea.

Posted by: BigD at October 08, 2007 04:23 PM (JJ4vV)

7
I'd heard about Gundam and how "important" it was for years. I finally
watched it and was a bit disappointed. Nevertheless Toren's comments
are fully valid and the show was highly influential.

In
general I've enjoyed little of it, but the short OAV's 0080 and 0083
were quite well done and the off the wall Turn A, despite the silly Syd
Mead mech designs, tells an engaging and upbeat story. (Syd Mead should NEVER do mechs..never ever.)

*************************************On
Ubu's comments regards CotS: I think the Abh may be based on the ideas
of Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihin. The constitutional monarchy with bit
checks on the Monarchy (multiple royal families) to prevent a King
George or Ivan the Terrible situation is intriguing.

I think
that the Abh should be able to completely supply themselves via
asteroid/ comet mining possibly supplemented by mining uninhabitable
worlds for, say radioactives or other very dense materials.

One
point on the propaganda of the UM,
while most of it was
xenophobic BS, remember that their most scurrilous accusation...that
the Abh were a genetically engineered slave race that killed their
former masters...was in fact revealed to be true

Metaphysician:
Slaves who revolt and kill their former masters are not likely to be looked on kindly by others of the former-master group, wouldn't you think?

Ubu, the Abh were involved in a long-term campaign of conquering and pacifying human worlds even before the war began. Part of why the Alliance started the war was that the Abh had been nibbling away at them for decades.

Martine wasn't part of any of the empires when the Abh showed up, but the Abh found them because the Abh were involved in conquering that section of the galaxy anyway.

And BigD's point is a good one: a noble in charge of a planet has virtually complete autonomy to do whatever he wants with it and with his people. Just look at what Febdash did with his little mansion, and how obsequious all his retainers were. That's not a life I want to live. (Not that he'd have me, of course, since I'm not a young, beautiful woman.)

The Empire gets its revenue from interstellar trade, but I see no reason why the noble who owns a planet would be forbidden to tax it, to whatever extent he feels appropriate. It's true that he makes money from selling fuel, but I doubt that's the full extent of his source of wealth.

I'm not convinced that interstellar trade is the sole source of tax revenue for the Empire, either. You can't finance the kind of war we see being fought through just that. The Empire lost more than 5,000 ships just at the Battle of Aptic Gate. That's a tremendous amount of wealth, yet it was hardly a scratch on the combined fleet that the Crown Prince commanded in that campaign. I think that the Empire must levy taxes on the nobles, who are told "Raise it however you want."

The basic problem with the empire is that it is absolutist. The lowest level of citizens, subjects of some noble, are effectively slaves. It happens to be the case that in many, perhaps even most, worlds it's a benign absolutism but that could change. Anytime there's a generational turnover in the nobility for a planet, you could get a Caligula or a Nero. And the Empire wouldn't care.

Subjects of a planet can escape by joining the Navy, but as soon as they retire they have to return to their home world, and resume effective slaveship. It's only grounders who become officers (like Samson) who are freed from that. Technically they become knights (of which there are millions) and Abh. Any kids Samsom eventually has will, by law, have blue hair and the extra sense organ.

By chance Syd had a table next to me at one of the San Diego Comic Cons, the same year he was working on the Gundam mecha designs. He had a sketchbook filled with ideas, and after swearing me to secrecy, he happily showed me page after page of ghastly designs. Syd is a really, really nice guy, so I plastered a smile on my face and nodded brightly, all the while hoping the Japanese designers could salvage something from the wreckage.

Alas, they could not...or chose not to. He's kind of a god over there.

Well, the topic may have drifted, but it drifted to be of more interest to the readership.

What little I've seen of Gundam did little to impress me, but that was largely because I saw it long after getting into the hobby. Historically, it's significant, but the form has moved so far beyond it, that it now seems more quaint than anything.

And seeing as we've got a mini CotS discussion going...

A couple friends expressed an interest in starting a weekly anime night a couple months ago. We've completed three weeks so far. They expressed an interest in watching a straight sci-fi / space opera last week, so tomorrow night they get their first exposure to Crest of the Stars. I know at least on of them is going to be aggravated that the show it incomplete, but I can just point him in the general direction of the (slowly) translated novels.

If you've studied societies which have relied on slaves, one thing you find is that the free social class considers this to be acceptable, and even justified. It is the slaves' lot in life to serve, and attempting to rise above that, no matter how, is seen as wrong.

So in fact, it would not be difficult in the United Mankind propaganda to make it seem as if the Abh not only had been slaves, but deserved to be slaves, and were not entitled to become free -- let alone entitled to ultimately own and rule all genetic humans. Not a difficult sell at all.

It's not just slaves which are seen that way. That was also the case in feudal societies. The upper classes see the existing order as being how things should be. The lowest class are not seen as equals; they're one step up from animals and they exist only to serve their betters. That was the case in Dark Ages Europe, and that's how it was in Feudal Japan, and in China for most of its history.

In fact, the feudal system as presented in Crest/Banner is patterned on the feudal system as it existed just before the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The peasants in a given fief belonged to their daimyo for all intents and purposes, who could do pretty much anything he wanted in his own domain. If he was sworn to a greater daimyo, that one might decide to interfere but generally did not do so. For all practical purposes, everyone besides a few samurai were property. Peasants who tried to flee their homeland would be captured and returned, and probably be severely punished.

That was true in Europe, too. Peasants didn't have any choice; they had to stay on the land where they were born -- because without peasants, land is worthless.

14
See, this is why I should check my assumptions more thoroughly before commenting on a series. Probably comes from science fiction settings with 'aristocratic' governments that exist on top of a prior state of free society, or similar. More Victorian Britain than Medieval Europe, if in a rather totally different sense.

Posted by: metaphysician at October 08, 2007 07:55 PM (KVPNK)

15
Back on to Gundam, there was some variation. The War in the Pocket OVA went 180 degrees from the 14 year old boy wish fulfillment, with the boy learning how awful war could be. Gundam 08 MS Team was a more realistic look at mecha combat. One of the main chars even destroyed a Gundam with a bazooka (why did everyone else always try machine guns?).

Why machine guns? It's part of the genre. I noticed it when I watched Gasaraki: infantry never have appropriate weapons when they fight against mecha. They always use light machine guns and rifles.

Because part of the wish-fulfilment is to walk through a battlefield ignoring all the fire from the puny, weak, humans around you. It isn't very fun if you walk your mecha onto a battlefield and lose it to multiple AP rocket hits almost immediately.

That's one of several things I really hated about Gasaraki, and I gather it's a more generic thing in the genre as a whole.

That kind of assumption is not uncommon in other genres. For instance, in stories about criminals (e.g. Noir) one genre-level assumption is that the police are invariably either stupid or corrupt, and thus don't represent a hazard to the criminals at the center of your story. Two or three times in Noir, Mireille and Kirika leave a really amazing number of corpses behind in some park or other. It never leads to headlines, and they're never bothered by the police.

I'll grant that one, because the genre wouldn't be any fun without it. I assume the same logic is supposed to apply to the problem of infantry in mecha shows, but I won't grant that one. Corrupt or incompetent cops are one thing, but infantry fighting for their lives against enemy mecha aren't going to make a mistake like that.

Last comment on C/BOTS: In the end, while I tend to think the Abh are better than their form of government (remember, they do NOT think exactly like us -- a point is made in Banner III about the "obedience gene") the key question is: "Would you want to be a serf in their empire, or in the United Mankind?" My opinion of the UM is so low, that I'm not sure. But I don't think I'd have objected to being a common person on Martine.

As for stupid mechas, well, I kept trying to find an excuse for them in Godannar. I thought it was interesting that Pops admitted the design was physically weaker. And at the end, the (male) Dr. Aoi said that it was the connection with the users spirit that made it work the way it did. Aside from the enormous resources required to maintain one, that would explain whey there were only a dozen or so in the world--only certain pilots could operate one.

Crew-served heavy infantry weapons would completely strip away the veneer of invincibility granted to mecha against anything but other mecha or superweapons, and prove just how stupid a concept mecha really are. Hence, the complete absence of crew-served heavy weapons.

At one point in Gasaraki, the JDF is protecting a certain facility and they know that they will be attacked there by mechas. They prepare their defenses -- but they don't call out engineers to lay any mines. Or do anything else which actually would have a chance of stopping the things.

21
Few things highlight that more than Hollywood's take on Starship
Troopers. Instead of scattered, highly-mobile power armor
deployed in fast-moving lines thinner than those used with modern
tanks, we have... well, exactly what you describe.

I would *hope* that things like Band of Brothers would help them figure
this out, but I doubt it. Hollywood groks combat far less than
even non-geek anime writers.

Ugh. The sins of that movie are endless. A prefab fort... under a cliff... with external supports... and no protection for the guys manning the machine guns. And that's just one scene.

But to combat topic drift...

One of the things that I never agreed with was the various Gundam's ability to either reach or de-orbit with little or no extra equipment. It was utterly absurd that they could carry that much energy. I don't care what sort of handwave "science" you use, you've got to have enough energy; if not to counteract gravity, then to cancel it with some scientific bolongnium.

In Vandred, I was pleased to note that the Vans, while being space or ground units, were not air units. They required a special "umbrella" shield or a dedicated sled to take the heat of descent, and the umbrella doubled as a (highly improbable) booster rocket to take it back up to space. The Dreads were space fighters only, and it was thought that the VanDreads were also, until Vandread Jura crashed into the water planet.

Of all the robot series I've ever tried to watch, that one was still the most unique and fun.

24
So Gumdam 08 MS Team should get point for realism, although it was a member of the Gundam team and not infantry who used the bazooka. In Neo-Ranga, the Self-Defense Forces used tanks, but they were ineffective. (Neo-Ranga looks like a mecha, but is more like a golem.) The Engineering Corps tried digging a pit to trap it, whic almost worked. BTW, what animes explictly have engineers, as opposed to the standard scientific genius?

Posted by: Jim Burdo at October 10, 2007 03:33 AM (Fg19u)

25
I was referring to "combat engineers", guys who know how to use explosives in war. In real life, combat engineers are extremely important in every significant army, but I've never seen them referenced in anime.

I have seen snippets of various Gundam shows, and frankly they just never did it for me. I want my mecha shows to be either completely over the top ala Goddannar or where the mecha is really just a tool for doing a job. All of the big mecha shows, Evangellion included are let down as others have noted by the completely unrealistic tactics employed, and overall lack of realism. I have yet to find an single manga or anime that realisticly portrays combat, I know that it is hard to do but could some one at least try. Hell the most realistic portrayal of combat in anime that comes readily to mind is the battle for Lior in FullMetal Alchemist. Say what you may about the show but the director understood concepts like reconnasence, combined armor-infantry combat teams and the use of cover and concealment, etc etc.

Hmm, me thinks I will now have to add Banner of the Stars to my depressingly long list of anime I need to get. I am down with fleet actions, I always thought that was the one kind of combat that tends to get portrayed in at least a semi realistic manner in anime or movies.

29
It's always my impression that the pacifist undertone of shows like
Gundam or what I've seen of Eurkea Seven have something to do with the
cultural implications of Japan's formal commitment to a pacifist
foreign policy after WWII. Can anyone actually substantiate this vague
feeling of mine?

I still find it extraordinary that the same
people who could produce the kamikazes could produce stuff like the
utopian all war is bad pacifism you find in Gundam. Although series
like Gundam have characters who are comparable to the sorts of
professional military officers you'd find in any western
military--people who take killing seriously, but aren't lost in a state
of perpetual existential angst--the focus always seems to be on the
adolescent boy who's horrified by what he does, but who, always,
strangely enough, is extremely good at it, while suffering from endless
angst.

And there's also the extremely odd portrayals of
military organizations you find in Anime. The female sub captain in
Full Metal Panic for me takes the cake--I don't mind, because I think
she's hot--but seeing her as a "captain" is truly preposterous.

Speaking of combat realism in mecha shows, all the comments in the thread are of course right, but Mecha shows for me are like the lightsabers of Star Wars--they allow futuristic technology to be mixed with the more stylized military practices of Feudal aristocracies, i.e. the single hand-to-hand duel with edged weapons. Nostalgia is a powerful thing, and I've always seen the use of humanoid mecha as an attempt to have the whiz-bang benefits of technology, while not feeling completely swamped by the machine. So give them limbs and have them fight like swordsmen at times. Even if it doesn't really make all the much sense. Now, if *that* isn't wish fulfillment, I don't know what is.

Posted by: baseball68 at October 10, 2007 08:04 PM (NFKek)

30
A large part of that does come from the postwar comitment, on paper at least to Pacifism, this from the country that is generally held to be the number five or six military power in the world in terms of dollars spent and hardware available. The Japanese like to pretend that by proclaiming a desire for peace they will have peace even though they know that to be a lie. Really it is very schiztophrenic, with the added complexities of the smeantic footwork that successive Japanese governments have taken to deny their own country's military potential. I talk about that here and here and a bit more here. Some related post can be found here, here, and finally here. Basically the Japanese public is well aware of the massive contradiction that they live with each day, and as a result I think is partly where your angst ridden teen boy who hates the fact that he is good at killing is reflection of the public's own conflicted feelings of being a citizen of a militarily powerful nation, but not liking the fact that they are so, and this is combined with a feeling of inferiority because that power can not be used and they must rely on the US to protect them. The strange and often ridiculous protrayals of military personel, wether officer or enlisted comes from the fact that the people writing the shows have probably never actually come into contact with someone who has been in the military. We don't often realize it but there is a very strong military subculture in the US and it bleeds over into the public at large, peerhaps less so than when conscription was in affect, but it is still there. The shows are a both antiwar, in the sense that war does in fact suck, people are trying to kill you, and doing so in places that most people would never voluntarily visit, but they are also an expression of the supressed but real desire of the Japanese public to break with the postwar pacifism and exercise the power that their nation posesses, but they don't want to have to pay the costs of doing so, because that would be bad, this is continuation of the postwar drive to make life as comfortable as possible for all so everyone could forget about the bad times before and during the war. The problem with that is that it creates this expectation that everything, including freedom has a monetary cost, but not a human cost, because that is the kind of thinking that occured during the war. The taint of defeat still hangs onto the idea of sacrifice of self for nation in Japan because that concept was so widely accepted and followed by the populace right up until the anouncement of the Japanese surrender on August 15th. Like I said it is a very schizophrenic situation that is hideously complex and worthy of real scholarly study rather than a quicky analysis at 12:15 AM in a blog comment.

RT, I have the feeling that when you typed that you used paragraphs. You need to have Javascript enabled for paragraphing to work.

That Japanese double-think about their past is most apparent to me in how they seem to have a kind of romantic view of what things were like in Japan in the early Taishou era, say around 1921. In a lot of anime it's portrayed as a sort of golden age. There's a big military presence, but the military is viewed in idealistic terms, and the Japan of that era is seen as a world power who deals as an equal with the Europeans in a world of comity. Life at home in Japan is idyllic.

It wasn't actually like that. Japan of 1921 was a police state. Japan did deal with the other great nations but they all resented it. There sure as hell wasn't any comity, and given that everyone in Japan was constantly pelted by propaganda and indoctrination, life at home was far from being idyllic.

And even to the extent that it was like that, it got really a lot worse shortly thereafter. Civilian government was hamstrung by military intervention even in 1921, and by the end of the 20's it was a sham. By the mid 1930's even the pretense was abandoned, and Japan was ruled by the Army.

As to the "comity" part, Japan in 1921 was very, very imperialistic. American "Manifest Destiny" had nothing on Japan's aspirations.

But you won't find any of that in anime. When that era is portrayed, it's peace and happiness and bunnies frolicking in the sunshine. The first couple of times I ran into that misportrayal of that period in anime (Sakura Wars, and then Steel Angel Kurumi) I was offended by it. Now I just take it in stride.

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The engineering unit in NeoRanga was an actual combat engineering unit called the A.S.E. Explosives had worked well, plus they were in an urban environment (Tokyo). Granted the commander's main goal was building his own mecha and everyone except him and the mecha pilot was a pretty woman.

Raging Tachikoma, how about the combat realism in Shirow Masamune's works? They seem pretty logical.

Another anime with combat fleet actions: Legends of Galactic Heroes. It seems to be in more of a strategic mindset that cost the Japanese navy in WWII.

In contrast to Steel Angel Kuromi, Pumpkin Scissors is set in an analog to Germany after WWI (although they use Japanese military insignia). It's not a police state, but living conditions are pretty grim for most people. The titular unit focuses on war relief.

Mea Culpa, I didn't use paragraphs. Originally I had ontended to keep it brief but I got going and didn't stop to think about formatting.

I totally agree with you about the highly romanticized view of Japan in the late Meji to early Taisho period, there is never any attempt made to adress the real issues of the time either the severe political repression and growing military influence in politics or the stark divide between the haves and have nots.

The duality shows itself best when ever the Japanese talk about security issues, from both sides of the isle you hear about how Japan should be playing a greater role in the world, and she has to carry her own weight. But when push comes to shove people are quick to hide behind article nine because actually doing something requires making tough choices.

As for Shiro Masumune's work, yeah some of it is realistic, but some of it is completely unbelievable. The Ghost in the Shell stuff is pretty good in some respects, but it is reaslly only ever focusing on one group of highly trained professionals. Section Nine is nothing but a SWAT team on steroids with a really loose set of rules of engagement. His portrayal of anything to do with armor tends to fall flat, there is a reason tanks have been using tracks since the first world war. A tank with legs would be much easier to diable than a conventional design. I won't even try to talk about Dominion Tank Police, which is a cool show that falls into the ridiculously over the top category.

September 08, 2007

Shows I'll never watch: Full Metal Alchemist

I confess that a lot of my resistance to watching Full Metal Alchemist is childish stubbornness. About three years ago a young woman who used to be a reader of mine, and almost certainly is not any longer, pestered me constantly about how cool and marvelous it was, and I've always reacted extremely negatively to full-court-press hype. I think that kind of negative reaction was a survival skill for those of us who grew up during the era of only-five-TV-channels, given how absurdly emphatic a lot of hard-sell advertising was. So my natural reaction when anyone puts that kind of pressure on me is likely to get an acutely negative reaction.

The young woman in question eventually gave up.

But there were other reasons why I wasn't thrilled by it. First, it seems to be a bit grim, and generally I don't like down-beat stories. There's no woman as a continuing character, another down-check. (I confess it: I like girls.) And I hear tell that about two thirds of the way through the series they do a Gainax and change everything. What had previously been explained as being magic is suddenly explained as being high tech.

I've heard that the ending is weird. But the biggest reason why I was never tempted to watch is that the story concept just doesn't intrigue me. It still doesn't.

But I did notice something that confuses me, and does make me wonder if I've made a mistake. More of the confusion than the questioning, but that's as may be.

The two main characters are brothers who try to use alchemy to bring their mother back to life. As a result of it, Edward loses his leg and arm (which are replaced by metal prosthetics) and Alphonse loses his entire body (which is replaced by a metal prosthetic body).

Why is it that both of them are voiced by women? Edward is voiced by Paku Romi, whose work as Nayuta in Shingu I really, really enjoyed. And Alphonse, the one living inside the giant robot body, is voiced by Kugimiya Rie -- who did Futaba in Shingu and was Shana in Shakugan no Shana and generally does "little girl" voices. (Not always, but usually.)

What the heck? Is the idea that they're both still very young? From the series concept they're both adults by the time the first episode begins. Why do they have those voices? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

But considering how much I enjoyed Paku Romi's performance as Nayuta, I'm interested in finding something else she starred in to watch. It won't be Naruto, because her character Temari is apparently not a very big role. So I was looking down her list of characters and spotted Full Metal Alchemist, hence my confusion and this post.

It might be "The Law of Ueki". It's a stupid concept for a series, but I think I'm going to try a DVD or two of it. Even if it is stupid, her performance may redeem it.

2
If I recall, Ed is in his mid-teens and Al is in his early teens, so voicing them with women worked out all right (the two characters are prodigies, more or less). Plus, I think Al basically stopped growing when his soul was placed inside the metal body.
Although I enjoyed FMA, I was never that crazy about it ... for me, part of the problem is that it's a long series, and it's hard to balance a long series properly. I.e., on the one hand, it can't be as neat and perfect as a teacup; it has to have a bit of sprawl. But on the other hand, it shouldn't lose its sense of cohesion or end up with episodes that can be dismissed as filler. I felt that FMA just didn't hold together strongly enough.
Another problem was, as you mentioned, the ending, which I found disappointing. And the series did take some strange turns during the later segments. I don't remember them explaining away the magic of alchemy as a science, but I do recall a lot of pseudo-metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, and that stuff never translates well.
Of course, none of this stopped me from enjoying the series when I was watching it.

9
What makes FMA work, ultimately, is the strong bond between Edward and Alphonse Elric. The portrayal of their relationship carries the show past some of the clunkier bits of plotting and provides the heart-&-soul of the series overall. If watching the brothers doesn't hold your attention, not much else of the rest will.

I love the series, but I also understand that it's not "for everybody." My days of heavy duty shilling for one show or another are long behind me...

10
I don't recall any "Gainax" changes, though there were surprises along the way as former allies were revealed to be bad guys, and vice versa. I enjoyed the story, and although I think that overall it had a postive outcome, be warned that it does have its darker moments. Some of the bad guys are really bad, with body counts to prove it, and some good people do die.

Posted by: Siergen at September 09, 2007 10:30 AM (bxCXv)

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My real problem with FMP is that I keep catching episodes of it here
and there on CN when I just have the TV on for background noise. It's
not bad (and the dub is unusually good), but it's kind of disjointed in
places and seeing the series out of order is a terrible, terrible idea.
I still don't really know what sequence of events happens where.

But it's definitely good enough to try, though I don't know that I'd go spending money on it myself.

12
I must admit I'm fairly hesitant to chime in on posts like this. I
don't know whether my brief recommendation will actually have the
effect of making you even less likely to watch the series. I figure in
this case nothing could persuade you to watch FMA. So this is for
anyone else who might be on the fence.

I was in the same
situation as Avatar_exADV. I'd catch a couple episodes on the TV in the
background. However, once I actually sat and watched a few, I was
hooked. I went back and watched the whole series. I do agree that about
halfway through the writing does a bit of a hiccup and loses it's way
for a bit. I've always assumed this was due to the anime outrunning the
manga. At that point the show had to come up with it's own story. It
takes a couple of episodes, but they do find their feet, and I found
the later parts of the series as good as the beginning. The ending did
leave a bit to be desired, but I found the movie to be a very soothing
chaser. I really loved this series, and all it's characters. Even the
side characters are enjoyable. However, it is a very grim series. These
poor boys are put through hell multiple times. But I never stopped
cheering for them. I really recommend this to anyone who might be on
the fence. If you think you might like this, give it a shot.

Posted by: Mob at September 10, 2007 07:01 AM (f+cPk)

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Some people claim that the dud of Edward is better than the original Japanese voice, injecting the world-weariness you'd expect from him but still sounding like a child.

Another interesting thing about the series: no power-ups, even after they get the object every one's looking for.

As for women as continuing characters, in addition to Lust and Risa Hawkeye, the main female is the boys' childhood friend Winry Rockbell. She maintains Ed's automail and beats out Parfet Balblair for the title of cutest gearhead.

Posted by: Jim Burdo at September 11, 2007 03:29 AM (T/9Kr)

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I never finished watching FMA - it was picked up mid-series, and though the fansubbers did complete it, it didn't show up at AnimeSuki. What I saw of it was pretty good, though I was surprised when I found out around episode 20 that it was a 51-episode series.

I agree with ambulatorybird - Al (the younger brother) is 14 when the main story opens, but he lost his body when he was 10 and in many ways is still a child, and his voice reflects that. Can't speak as to the ending, since I haven't seen it yet. And yes, Winry is a repeating (though not starring) female character and a gifted engineer, so there's something for you there.

Side topic - I've found a good WYSIWYG editor, in some ways superior to Innova, the current Minx editor, that works in Safari and Opera. Unfortunately much of its functionality is tied up in a PHP backend, and I'll have to somehow port, rewrite, or modularise it to make it available in Minx. (Which is written in Python and runs on servers that don't necessarily even have PHP installed.)

The system should apply a "convert breaks" filter to comments that aren't made with the WYSIWYG editor (line breaks get converted to <br> automatically) but that's clearly not working, so I'll get that fixed for you.

August 24, 2007

Series I'll never watch: Full Moon wo Sagashite

Kids can be cruel and insensitive. Humans are like dogs: we have to be socialized. We're born animals.

So I admit that I was mean to my younger sister sometimes. She had different tastes in fiction than I did. By mid grade school I was already reading science fiction. Her favorite stuff is what I at the time referred to as "sob sob stories". I'd occasionally interrupt her in her room when she was reading, sobbing uncontrollably -- and I'd kid her mercilessly. (This when I was 10 and she was 8.)

There's a genre of anime like that. Or at least, there's a lot of series like that. Not all shoujo stories are like that, but that's the genre where you'll find this. I've seen a couple, and I never want to see another. (Princess Nine, I'm never going to look at you again.)

The goal of the writing is to try to maximize the hankie count among the girls who watch it, and they wring every sob possible out of the situation. Or at least that's how Princess Nine felt, and I'm sure it's like that for a lot of others. Like, for instance, Full Moon wo Sagashite. Here's the series summary:

Twelve-year-old Kouyama Mitsuki was devastated when she was diagnosed with a malignant tumor of the throat. She had made a promise to the boy she loves that she would one day become a singer, but her illness made singing impossible. To make matters even worse, two angels of death, Takuto and Meroko, appeared to Mitsuki and informed her that she only had one year left to live. This news provides an even greater motivation for Mitsuki to fulfill her dreams, and with a little bit of divine intervention, she begins her quest to become a professional singer so she can be reunited with Eichi before time runs out.

And from that they managed to wring fully 52 episodes.

For all I know they actually pulled out a happy ending. Maybe there was some sort of miracle that cured her cancer. Who knows.

What I know is that I don't have the slightest interest in watching the series to find out. I'm sorry now that I used to tease my sister about her sob-sob stories. But I also know that I don't like them -- even if they have happy endings. Experiencing such a story is sheer torture for me.

It's not fifty-two episodes of angst; much of the series is upbeat and positive, and I enjoyed it a great deal. But I doubt that the trials and tribulations of an up and coming idol singer is really your kind of story. Also, you really have to like the music, because they reuse it. They reuse it a lot.

August 12, 2007

Shows I'm ambivalent about 1: Princess Tutu

While we're on the subject, there are also shows I have very mixed feelings about. They might be good, and they might be utter trash.

Princess Tutu -- a duck falls in love with a prince. She is given a magical mcguffin which permits her to transform into a girl, and also into a magical ballerina. When in ballerina form, her dance can perform magic, and she has to overcome enemies by dancing for them.

It's original. I'll give them that. So as I sometimes do when I want to get an idea about a show without seeing any spoilers, I went to Chris Beveridge and looked at his letter scores without reading the rest of his reviews. And his scores? A-, A, A+, A, A, A for the six DVDs respectively.

Ouch. The last time I saw him so enthusiastic about a series when doing this, it was Shingu. Ouch again.

Why am I afraid of it? Because I'm getting Fancy Lala vibes. Pixy loved Fancy Lala, and I guess I can see why. But I watched 4.5 episodes of it and simply could not force myself to watch any more.

He described the series as "little girl wish-fulfilment" and he was exactly right about that. Lala is 8 years old, plus or minus, and she lives in an innocent world where no one ever tries to take advantage of her. God (I assume it was) gives her a magic mcguffin and two living plushies and with their help she can transform herself into a 16-year-old girl who rapidly becomes a successful model and idol.

I kept expecting someone to start groping her, and it never happened. That's the problem. I don't live in an innocent world, and I couldn't stop cringing. Fancy Lala is probably a very good show for the right audience, but I'm not that audience. I fear that Princess Tutu might be the same.

Princess Tutu is clearly a kid's show, but that alone doesn't mean it isn't worth watching. It might be another Sugar or Petite Princess Yucie, which isn't dumbed down and is worth watching even for adults. But I'm terribly afraid that it's going to be more like Fancy Lala.

It may be moot. ADV discontinued it. But if it comes back out as a thinpak (which is likely) then I face an all-or-nothing decision about the series.

4
The wikipedia article makes it sound like a magical girl show, with dancing replacing fighting to deal with her enemies. Chiaki J. Konaka (Serial Experiments Lain, Magic Users Club) is the writer, if that helps.

Gakuen Heaven -- is about love and romance at an all male boarding school. Take Marimite and sex-change everyone and you'd get this show. It isn't yaoi; there's no graphic sex. Instead, this genre loads up on the angst. And the bishounen.

Princess Princess -- Another all male high school. At least at this one the guys are trying to stay hetero. So they pick the most androgenous member of each incoming class and designate that him a hime. The "Princesses" have to crossdress in goth-loli style as much as possible, just to let everyone else remember what girls are like.

Just writing about these things makes me feel soiled. But when it comes to licensing, there's nothing that MediaBlasters won't consider. They bought both of them.

Why, oh why, with utter crap like this getting licensed, is it that no one has picked up Magipoka yet? It seems as if the only plausible answer is that the Japanese studio that owns the rights is asking too much money for it.

UPDATE: MediaBlasters announced the license of Princess Princess at the same time they announced the license of Girls High. There's an odd sort of symmetry in that, I guess.

They also announced Noodle Fighter Miki that day, but I'm not sure how that fits in.

3
Muteki Kanban Musume is analogous to 2x2 Shinobuden, which is a RightStuf title in R1, same as Shingu. It's not really a bottom title, in my humble opinion. Of course, if it has such perception, MediaBlasters might have gotten it cheaper, which can only be a good thing. Maybe the aborted manga disaster actually helped here. Very serendipitous!

August 11, 2007

Series I'll never watch 3: Otome wa boku ni koishiteru

So what's wrong with this one? It wants me to believe that this person is a 17-year-old guy. Wrong. Not possible.

This is a common problem with H-game conversions which try to preserve the original story without bringing across all the sex. The story usually doesn't make any sense and without the sex it's also pointless. (Most H-games don't have stories. What they have is scenarios, setups.)

The theory here is that this person's rich grandparent had wanted an offspring to go to a particular prestigious girl's high school but was frustrated by not having any female offspring. So in their will they made a huge bequest for this grandson conditional on him attending and graduating from said prestigious girl's school.

That part's fine. Well, no, it isn't. It would be a lot easier to buy if it were a middle school. Our hero's voice hasn't changed? He hasn't started shaving? I remember all the things that happened to me at puberty. This guy hasn't started packing on muscle? His hips got wide instead of his shoulders?

And would a surreptitious guy really wear a haltertop like that? And do you believe he'd look that good in it? That's at least D-cups, and there's no way they're falsies.

If that's a guy, he's been taking pills, and I mean the wrong kind of pills. The only way "he" could look like that is if he was being overloaded with estrogen in preparation for surgery, to the point where puberty was suppressed.

Popotan is also an H-game conversion, but they chucked the original story (and the protagonist) entirely. The only thing they used from the game was the character designs of the girls and the original name. Popotan is not top-shelf but it's better than you might think (if you can get past the "eew" factor inherent in the Mii character) and it has a pretty decent story to tell.

It's entirely possible that this series also has a decent story to tell, but I'm not interested in finding out. I don't need traps, for one thing, and this conceit would require stretching my suspension-of-disbelief way beyond the breaking point.

1I My Me! Strawberry Eggs did it better. Slender guy turned into tall, athletic woman, with the help of falsies, expert makeup, and a voice altering widget. Also spawned about a hundred AMVs to the tune of Aerosmith's Dude Looks Like a Lady.

4
IMHO the people who did I My Me! Strawberry Eggs cheated a bit with the artwork. (I should dig out the DVDs, do some frame grabs, and do a blog post on that...)

Anyway, the male version of the teacher had stronger shoulders than the female version, IIRC, and there were a few other ways they cheated. Remember when the vice principal got a look at "her" cleavage? Push-up bra or no, there shouldn't have been any "there" there!

There is one series (I'm not going to name) which has a reverse trap in it where they absolutely, unquestionably, cheat on the art. In female form, she's got tits bigger than canteloupes and big wide hips. In male form they're nowhere to be seen.

But by the time the reverse trap was revealed in the series, it had already become clear to me that they were pulling out the stops on the cliches and that they knew how stupid it was.